Merger-Integration: Many mergers fail to deliver the expected value to shareholders because of poor integration processes. Integration strategy should reflect deal strategy. What level of autonomy will the acquired company keep? Which corporate culture will take over? Which leadership style, performance management tools or compensation philosophy will prevail? Integration is transformation. Therefore, your integration strategy will translate into an HR transformation strategy too. This is where the HR Operating Partner’s value comes into play: in designing business-oriented HR strategies that support seamless and successful merger integrations.
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Scaling up fast-growing organizations: “keeping the vitality of DAY 1”! How do you scale up a firm without altering its foundational “DNA”? Venture Capital and Private Equity partners know that founding a business and scaling it up requires different types of leadership styles. Sustainable growth is about scaling up culture, leadership, engagement rules and the core values that genuinely reflect the business vision. Growing globally across multiple geographies and cultures adds to the complexity. Therefore, the role of the HR Operating Partner who translates the business strategy into the core HR strategic framework, policies and tools is instrumental to fueling growth, enhancing brand and reinforcing corporate culture.
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Restructuring – Downsizing: Many executives embark on downsizing plans after missing the quarterly results. It often has an impact on the stock’ price but does it deliver transformational change? Does it foster long term value? Often the restructuring plan is reduced to a cost-cutting exercise disconnected from any strategic transformation of the disrupted business model or shrinking revenue streams. Downsizing without a clear strategic growth plan and review of operations & processes, may only lead to more downsizing. By the same token, restructuring should not be undertaken only in crisis situations. Given today’s pace of digital disruption, no business can be exempt from a continued reinvention of its business model around the customer experience. Achieving this takes leadership and courage to make the “tough calls”. This is where a strong HR Business Partner will successfully implement the “reduction-in-force” while keeping the workforce engaged and management focused on business priorities.
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Turnaround Management and Corporate Renewal: Speed and perfect execution in Turnaround are instrumental to stopping the (cashflow) bleeding. Downsizing is almost always a key component of the restructuring plan. It is never done in isolation and puts your entire workforce under stress, not only the people impacted by the restructuring plan. In a knowledge-based economy, how can you win the communication battle inside and outside of the organization, protect brand, reputation and operations continuity? How can you keep the organization focused when downsizing brings resistance to change? While speed and perfect execution are paramount to the success of the Turnaround plan, they can be incompatible because speed increases the risk level. How will you hedge these additional risks and ensure the perfect execution of the Turnaround plan in large organizations where people are disengaged? Successful HR Turnaround Executives know that turning around a company starts with turning people around.